The Lieutenant Don't Know: One Marine's Story of Warfare and Combat Logistics in Afghanistan

By Jeff Clement

“A unique insight into the war experience . . . a realistic picture of what it is like to serve in Afghanistan as a Marine combat logistician” (Small Wars Journal).

When he joined the Marines, Jeff Clement was not a high-speed, top-secret recon guy. A logistician instead, he led combat convoys across treacherous terrain in southern Afghanistan through frequent enemy attacks in order to resupply US and British positions. As such, he and his vehicles were a constant target for the resistance, and each movement was a travail, often accompanied by thundering blasts as the insurgents paved their way with IEDs. Every step forward was fraught with danger, even as each objective had to be met. As a Marine Corps lieutenant, he deployed to Afghanistan twice and always found a learning curve, as men previously on the ground were more savvy, and the insurgents, there for the duration, were savvier still.

The Lieutenant Don’t Know provides a refreshing look at the nitty-gritty of what our troops have been dealing with in Afghanistan—from the perspective of a young officer who was perfectly willing to learn and take responsibility for his units in a confusing war where combat was not merely on the “front,” but all around and looking over all their roads.

“Finally, a readable, honest and gritty account of the dangerous, exhausting labor that keeps ‘The Green Machine’ going.” —Bing West, New York Times–bestselling author of One Million Steps

“One of the best war memoirs I’ve ever read . . . a moving, inspiring work, that’s enjoyable as hell, as well.” —Stan R. Mitchell, author of Gravel Road

• Language: English
• Publisher: Casemate Publishers
• Release date: Apr 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781612002491

Book preview

PREFACE

FEBRUARY 2013

WASHINGTON, DC

Alot of books have been written about Marines. Some of them by Marines, some by people who spent time around Marines, some by people who don’t know anything about Marines, but all by people who think they know all there is to know about Marines. I suppose I am in the same boat as these individuals, because I too claim to know quite a bit about being a Marine.

I worked on this book off and on for a few years. The thing that kept me from really going ahead with it each time I picked it up was always the same— it ended up just being a litany of complaints—misery is the human condition and mine is worse than everybody else’s, that sort of stuff.

In the TV sitcom Seinfeld, George Costanza once said, If you take everything I’ve accomplished in my life and condense it down to one day, it looks decent. A lot of Marine Corps memoirs seem to do the same sort of thing, either with all the heroic accomplishments of their career or, just as common, all of their grievances. Neither tells the whole story, and neither is all that enjoyable to read.

So I waited to tell the story. I waited until I was a little less passionate about the events, until the edges were a little less raw. I think I’ve hit a sweet spot, where I can tell the story somewhat dispassionately but while the details haven’t been completely forgotten.

Marines are allowed to lie when they tell war stories. Or rather, whether or not we’re allowed to, we do lie when telling war stories. I could claim I won’t lie, but that would (naturally) be a lie. With that being said, disregard everything I have to say (close the book now) or regard everything you disagree with as a lie. I am solely responsible for any inaccuracies.

I have written this based on what I remember. Where and when possible, I have tried to verify the sequence of events with other Marines who were there, from old notebooks, and from news and blog posts that are available online. At the end of the day though, this depicts the way I remember things happening. The tone that I take is based on my impression of the events, and those impressions shape memories. I don’t guarantee 100% historical accuracy of the details and timelines, but the overall sequence of events and moral of the story is accurate.

Parts of the book will be most interesting to people who were in Afghanistan at the same time that I was, other parts to those who were Marines in years past and finally, some parts will be most relevant to people in the future, like young men and women who aspire to join the Corps. Some passages are written simply as a record of the things that the Marines of Combat Logistics Battalion 6 (CLB-6) did, so that maybe someday people will remember.

My experience was not supremely unique or extraordinary and to some degree that’s what makes my experience important. The stuff in this book is the experience of the average Marine in Afghanistan. Thousands of Marines did these types of things, and more. We did what our country asked of us and what our country’s elected representatives asked of us. We did this despite what often seemed like public indifference to our war.

My sense of what is possible and impossible will be forever shaped by what the Marines of CLB-6 did in Afghanistan. The basic premise of this book is that the Marines of CLB-6 were average Marines called to do what amounted to average combat tasks, and in the course of doing so, accomplished something extraordinary . . . something that most Americans cannot even fathom. Called to do these tasks, the average individual would decry them as terrifying and impossible. Despite the limitations of the equipment we were provided with, and the best efforts of an enemy who viewed us as an easy target, the Marines of CLB-6 lived up to the best of what it means to be an American. More importantly, they lived up to the pinnacle of what it means to be a Marine—refusing to be stopped.

In writing this book I often asked myself, Do you deserve to write a book? Who do you think you are? Your experience wasn’t that big a deal. My experience does not rise far above the baseline of any of the Marines in combat. There were firefights, where my Marines and I were shot at, and shot back. An IED exploded under my truck, causing permanent spinal and nerve damage and making it hard to concentrate at times. We MEDEVAC’d Marines on helicopters, not sure that we’d ever see them alive again. But no, my experience does not really rise above the baseline for combat.

So, for the Marines out there: This book was not written primarily with you in mind. There will be (long) passages where your reaction will be I know all this already or every Marine does that . . . does he think he’s special? I am continually reminded that the civilian world at large doesn’t know what we do. We need to tell them objectively and without agenda at every opportunity.

Every day that we were at war in Afghanistan, Marines had experiences like mine, but the general population of America was not aware of them. A few might watch Generation Kill or Zero Dark Thirty and say, that’s what the war is. The rest of the people over there are just killing time, playing XBOX and waiting to come home in seven months. No big deal.

And so here is my story. An average guy in combat. This is what war is. War is gritty. It is stressful. It is about compromises. It permanently impacts everyone it touches. I signed up for it, but nobody knows what they really signed up for until afterwards, and that’s an important thing to realize.

CHAPTER ONE

NO REGRETS

If I die in a combat zone

Box me up and ship me home

Pin my medals upon my chest

Tell my Momma I did my best

Now Momma, Momma, don’t you cry

The Marine Corps motto is Do or Die.

—Traditional Marine Corps Running Cadence

APRIL 2010

SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF MUSA QAL’EH

HELMAND PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN

The Afghan insurgents were aiming at me specifically, I was certain. The closer the bullets were to hitting my head, the slower time seemed to go, and the slower I seemed to be moving.

Goddammit, where is that wrecker? I yelled to my platoon sergeant.

I don’t know, sir, but it’s gotta be coming up soon. Godfather went to go get it like ten minutes ago, Staff Sergeant Joseph Caravalho, my Hawaiian-borne platoon sergeant yelled back. Godfather was the callsign of one of our sergeants.

A hundred-plus pound IED had nailed one of our trucks. It was one of the biggest IEDs we had seen. The engine compartment was shredded, and tires had been thrown over a hundred feet in the air with a mushroom-shaped dust-filled shockwave. We couldn’t recover this truck without our giant armored tow truck that we called a wrecker. As soon as we were stopped by the IED, Afghan insurgents began firing at us from several directions and dropping mortar rounds on our position. Bullets ricocheted off the truck I was working on, inches from my head.

What the hell am I doing here? I asked quietly. I chuckled to myself and answered with a canned refrain, often heard among the Marine Corps’ junior officers to describe their own obliviousness. The lieutenant don’t know.

DECEMBER 2012: CHRISTMAS COCKTAIL PARTY, SYRACUSE, NY

Every year, my in-laws throw an old-fashioned cocktail party, with drinks and hors d’oeuvres. I was talking with one of the guests at the party, I suppose one of the neighbors, when I was asked a question that I hadn’t ever gotten.

Do you regret becoming a Marine? he asked.

I was taken aback, insulted even—but it was an honest question. I’m pretty sure that he could tell I was surprised (or maybe not—the libations flowed freely and he had drunk quite a bit), but I tried not to let it show on my face.

No, you know, not at all, I responded. I joined the Marine Corps to serve my country as cliche as that sounds and to learn, and to do stuff that I could never do anywhere else. I’ve gotten to do things that none of my college peers have gotten to do. So no, I don’t regret joining the Marines.

I meant it, too. Even though I certainly had some difficult experiences, which, to be fair I expected—I also wanted them. I don’t regret it. There are different variations to the question Are you glad that you joined the Marines? I think the best way that I have found to answer the question is that it was the right decision for me, at that time, with what I knew then.

People would almost always follow that up with a question about Afghanistan. It might be What do you think about Afghanistan? or What’s it like over there? or the most irritating of all Did you kill anyone? As for Afghanistan, I’m proud of what I accomplished over there, and more so of what my Marines did, day in and day out. We answered the call of our country after 9/11, and did what we were asked to do.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: MR. JOHNSON’S HISTORY CLASS, GREEN HOPE HIGH SCHOOL, CARY, NC

I don’t think any American will forget where they were when they first heard about the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I was a sophomore in high school. One of the students had gotten word of the first plane hitting the tower, but nobody believed him. In 2001, most kids didn’t yet have cell phones, and smartphones were a thing of the future, so we had to ask permission from the teacher to use one of the computers in the classroom to check the news. Though he hadn’t heard anything, Mr. Johnson consented, hoping that the report wouldn’t be confirmed.

We couldn’t quite believe it or understand the magnitude of the attack, but Mr. Johnson turned on the TV and we learned of the plane hitting the Pentagon and the second World Trade Center tower.

All students at the school, as most students did nationwide, spent the rest of the school day watching the news. The bells would ring, and we would all race to the next classroom, trying not to be away from a TV for too long. My English teacher got a phone call and through her tears she laughed sarcastically as she told us what was said. The administration had directed all teachers to turn off the TVs, to resume teaching according to their lesson plans, and that today was a normal day.

Today is a pivotal day in world history. You watch, she said to the class. Today is not a normal day, and to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. You all have a right to be informed.You’re not legal adults yet, but this will affect most of your adulthood.

Pretty much every news station played the same few clips of the planes striking the towers and of the smoking buildings. I don’t think anybody really believed the World Trade Center Towers would hold, but it was still shocking watching them crumble an hour after the planes hit. Certainly after the first tower collapsed, everyone held their breath, hoping against hope that the second tower wouldn’t follow suit.

The final list of casualties totaled 2,996, but during the day the estimates from the various experts ran as high as 30,000.The commentators speculated wildly, and nobody yet knew what had happened with United Airlines Flight 93 (which was deliberately crashed near Stoneycreek, PA by the hijackers as the passengers were about to regain control of the plane).

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: PRAYER SERVICE, ST. MICHAEL’S CATHOLIC CHURCH, CARY, NC

I don’t think I’m alone in saying that by about noon on September 11th, I was in a state of emotional overload; my capacity for further shock or devastation was exhausted. Like many others, my family went to church that night, where a special prayer service was held for the victims of the attack. Again, we didn’t really know anything yet, but I agreed with Senator John McCain who said that this was an act of war.

I had long planned on joining the Navy. Both of my parents and both grandfathers had been in the Navy. The September 11th attacks strengthened my resolve. As much as the prayers for the victims might be worthwhile, if I could help prevent another attack, I felt that I must. It’s one thing to attack combatants—another entirely to attack people who are just going about their daily routine.

Sitting in that church in 2001, there were still seven years before I would commission in the military. I was sure that any counterattacks or wars would be resolved long before I would be old enough to play a part. After all, any military interventions would have to be twice as long as World War II for me to get a piece of the action, right? Still, I wanted to go to the Naval Academy, join the Navy, and help prevent another attack like 9/11.

FEBRUARY 2004: CARY, NC

I had been waiting for months for the admission decision letter from the Naval Academy to arrive. I knew the chances of being admitted to the Naval Academy were slim, but it is what I had always wanted to do. When I was at St. Bernadette’s Catholic Elementary School growing up, I used to pretend that our blue and white uniforms were the uniforms of midshipmen, and when we walked in two neat lines as a class, I would pretend that we were marching. I was the only one in the class who would square the corners in the hallway. I thought I was pretty cool. Everyone else just thought I was weird. I was wrong; they were right.

But it had finally arrived. I still have that letter, actually. I pulled it out to make sure I got the words that I read that day just right:

Dear Jeffrey:

Congratulations! We are pleased to announce that the Admissions Board has found you scholastically qualified for admission to the U.S. Naval Academy with the Class of 2008. You are guaranteed an offer of appointment. . . and so on . . . look forward to welcoming you as a member of the Brigade of Midshipmen.

Sincerely,

S.B. LATTA

Captain, U.S. Navy

Director of Admissions

I was ready to sign the paperwork and send it back that day, but my mom was insistent that I wait.

You don’t have to send it in yet, so don’t.You have a little more time to make the decision. Take the time.You might change your mind.

I was sure that she was wrong. But as usual, she was right. My parents had insisted that I look at a few other schools, just in case. I had gone to the prospective student orientation weekends at Georgia Tech,Virginia Tech, and NC State. I don’t think I seriously looked at any other schools. I was so dead set on engineering, I didn’t even look at any other majors.

The NROTC recruiter called me every week, asking me why I hadn’t sent in my application yet. He didn’t listen when I told him that it was because I didn’t want to do NROTC. Well, you’ll submit your application eventually. He was right.

I don’t remember when it hit me, but at some point I realized that it wasn’t so much a conscious decision as a realization, that I didn’t want to go to the Naval Academy. I think the academic challenge and the engineering student life at Georgia Tech was attractive, as was the idea of living in Atlanta.

I was still 100% committed to joining the Navy and I still wanted to be a surface warfare officer, but I was presented another road to get there. So I signed the NROTC papers and accepted admission to Georgia Tech. I was going to be a Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech and a helluva engineer.

AUGUST 2004: GEORGIA TECH NAVAL RESERVE OFFICER TRAINING CORPS INDOCTRINATION, NAVAL SUBMARINE BASE KINGS BAY, GA

Freshman year at Georgia Tech began with INFORM, the Navy ROTC Indoctrination for Midshipmen. It was a weeklong orientation session run by a staff composed of senior midshipmen, the staff officers, and most memorably, the Marines assigned to the unit. Several Marines are assigned to each NROTC unit to assist in the training of young midshipmen. Instead of separate Marine ROTC units, midshipmen are all lumped together in the same unit and are designated as either Navy Option or Marine Option with slightly different program requirements for each group.

Although I was a Navy Option midshipman, I received instruction from the Marines at INFORM. One of the most fear-inspiring among them was Sergeant Joshua Roberts, who had just graduated from Marine Officer Candidate School. A Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program (MECEP) candidate, he was a sophomore at Georgia State University and a fearsome sight to behold for new midshipmen. INFORM left us with an introduction to the Navy and Marine Corps, and a definite impression that only a few were qualified to be Marines.

Most of you Navy pukes couldn’t hack it, Sergeant Roberts said, but you’re welcome to come out to Marine PT to see how much you suck.

Throughout my freshman year, I continued attending Marine PT, but I thought I still wanted to be in the Navy. I didn’t begin to realize that I might want to be a Marine until the summer after my freshman year at CORTRAMID, a summer training program for midshipmen.

MAY 2005: CAREER ORIENTATION TRAINING FOR MIDSHIPMEN, NAVAL STATION NORFOLK, VA

CORTRAMID stands for Career Orientation Training For Midshipmen. The program is organized into four, one-week segments, each designed to expose young midshipmen to one of the major career paths that they might choose, both to help them make their career decisions and to give them some perspective on other types of naval operations. We would spend one week each with the Surface Navy, the Submarine Navy, Naval Aviation, and the Marines.

Getting to CORTRAMID was not as simple as I expected it to be. I had a set of paper military orders, as well as a paper itinerary and printout of my plane ticket from Raleigh to Norfolk. I tried to check in online, but got an error message. I chalked it up to the fact that the plane ticket had been booked through the military, and headed to the airport with my seabag. I got to the counter where the agent informed me that though my ticket had been reserved, it had never been paid for.

It looked like I would be late. Here I was, ten minutes into my career, literally on my first day of active duty, tasked with a simple assignment— move myself from Raleigh to Norfolk with a prepaid plane ticket—and I couldn’t even get that done. After a while on hold with a few different customer service reps at the Defense Travel Service (DTS), the agent called me over to the counter.

Alright, honey, there’s good news and there’s bad news. Your ticket has now been paid for. The bad news is that we just cancelled your flight.

That’s not good.

But it looks like we can get you there just a few hours late.You’ll have to go through Charlotte, but I think we can get you on a first class seat. I was rebooked on the later flight and managed to get to Norfolk. This was to be the first of many experiences with the military bureaucracy and administration that was less than stellar—although the pinnacle of administrative failures was not to come until a few years later, which resulted in every official document for the duration of my Marine Corps career having my first name spelled incorrectly.

The CORTRAMID staff met us at the airport and brought us to our home for the next few weeks at the Bachelor Enlisted Quarters at Naval Base Norfolk. After a few days of getting settled in, taking the Navy’s Physical Readiness Test and other administrative tasks, we began our rotation.

Aviation Week was spent at Naval Air Station Oceana, nearVirginia Beach. After completing swim quals to make sure we could float if the plane crashed, and the parachute simulator to learn how to bail out, every midshipman went up in a T-34. A two-seater, single engine propeller plane, the T-34 was the Navy and Marine Corps’ version of an airplane with training wheels.

Definitely an unforgettable experience, a few minutes after taking off the pilot said, You have the controls.

I have the controls.

You have the controls, he repeated, completing the last part of the three- step handover, a safety measure to ensure that someone is always in control of the aircraft. Under instruction from the pilot, I flew the plane out over the Atlantic Ocean. I figured we would turn around after a fairly sedate flight. Not so much. And it was awesome.

Alright, you’re going to do something called an Immelman turn now. Piece of cake. Pull back on the stick . . . good . . . now rudder and bank over now . . . sweet. Level off. The Immelman is basically a U-turn in midair. I never really had an intense desire to be a pilot, but getting to do that at CORTRAMID is definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.

Surface Week was spent aboard the USS Laboon, a destroyer, and it was interesting, but not much more than that. I didn’t have an unpleasant experience, but I didn’t walk away with a burning desire to be a Surface Warfare Officer.

For Submarine Week, we flew down to Kings Bay, GA. The platoon of midshipmen spent a few days running simulators in the Trident Training Facility, where the expert crews of the Ohio Class ballistic missile nuclear submarines are trained. The life-size mockups of submarine control rooms and engine compartments move and tilt, flood, and fill with smoke. The following few days were spent underway aboard the USS Albuquerque. Jumping off the bow of a submarine into the pristine blue waters in the middle of the Atlantic was a good time, but I didn’t think I had found my life’s calling in the submarine force.

I still wanted to be a naval officer, but after experiencing the Navy-centric part of CORTRAMID, I was most looking forward to Marine week. My eighth grade math teacher, Harry Dudley, a 1969 graduate of the Naval Academy, had told our class about Marine Week. That had been in 1999, six years prior, and I had been looking forward to it ever since.

The platoon traveled from Norfolk to Camp Geiger, NC. Located near Camp Lejeune, Camp Geiger is the home of the Marine Corps, School of Infantry-East. Marine Week included tours of various facilities, including some of the logistics motor pools, and exhibitions by different units, like Amphibious Assault Battalion. I ate up every minute of it. We ran PT, did obstacle and confidence courses, had combat conditioning, and some hand-to-hand combat training with a Marine Corps martial arts instructor. Guns weren’t a part of my upbringing, so firing an M-16 for the first time was a pretty big deal—I had never fired a weapon before.

The thing that impressed me the most about Marine Week, though, was the way the Marines carried themselves. Every single Marine we interacted with, from the senior lieutenant colonels briefly introducing themselves to the privates doing maintenance in the motor pool, carried themselves in a certain way. They had an easy swagger. Their uniforms were neat, their hair was always freshly cut, and they spoke with confidence. I wanted to be like them.

Back at school the next year, ROTC was back in full swing and I was no longer a freshman. I was a squad leader with a small squad of freshman midshipmen to lead. My focus, though, was Marine PT. I had gone to a few of the Marine Physical Training sessions freshman year to prove that I could, but all I had really proven was that I could show up. The Marine PT was harder than anything I had ever done. As a cross country runner in high school, I could run, but I was not prepared for five mile runs in boots and combat utility trousers.

Pull ups! Sergeant Roberts would yell. Four sets of twenty!

I was lucky if I could get twenty pull ups total, in short little sets of twos and threes. Four sets of twenty was out of the question. I started to feel that I had something to prove. Always the nerdy kid in school, running was about the only physical thing I was any good at. I started to work out, to try to prove something to the Marines in the unit. To prove that I could hack it just as well as they could. All the while, I still didn’t realize that deep down I already wanted to be a Marine.

Why do you want to be a Marine, Clement? Sergeant Roberts sneered, halfway through a five mile run. We had just crested Georgia Tech’s Freshman Hill, notorious for its steep grade, and so named because all of the freshman dorms are at the base of the hill, while all classes and campus facilities are at the top.

I don’t want to be a Marine, Sergeant.

"Then why are you here?"

To prove that I can hack it.

Whatever. What do you want to do in the Navy?

Drive ships. A textbook answer, but I couldn’t articulate a better one. Not at the pace we were running anyway.

"If you feel you have something to prove, that means that deep down you want to be a Marine.You have to be a Marine, you just don’t know it yet. You won’t be happy if you don’t try. Sergeant Roberts laughed. Who cares? I don’t. It’s your life. Prove it, don’t prove it."

I kept telling myself I had just gone out there to prove that a Navy midshipman could PT just as well as a Marine. I needed someone to push me over the edge, and that someone was Sergeant Mike Wehner.

Sergeant Wehner was also a MECEP, and was one of the most down-to- earth guys I had ever met.

Look, man, he said to me. We were in the wardroom of the NROTC building near the football stadium. You gotta ask yourself what you want to do.

I like teaching, I guess. We were talking about long-term plans. I loved being an engineering student and studying engineering, but I didn’t want to actually do engineering as a career.

Teaching, leading, mentoring, that’s all the same thing.You will not have an opportunity to do as much of that anywhere else except in the Marine Corps.The young Marines need officers who can do that.

Sergeant Wehner wouldn’t leave me alone. He would ask when I